I never expected to become a co-survivor, but I chose to become an advocate.

Living through my husband’s medical crises changed me forever. In picking up the pieces, I found a new mission: to educate people about the patient & family experience, and bring compassion to the forefront.

Who is Lady Glaucomflecken?

And What Is A Co-Survivor?

My name is Kristin Flanary, and I’m a speaker, writer, and advocate for humanity-centered healthcare. The center of my work is amplifying the co-survivor experience – what a spouse, partner, parent, sibling, child, or friend goes through when their loved one endures a health crisis. That all started when I became a co-survivor myself.

I “married into medicine” – my husband just so happens to be Dr. Glaucomflecken. We met in undergrad, so I’ve been there from pre-med to private practice. That honestly might qualify as a co-survival experience on its own. But while we were building the foundations of our careers together at Dartmouth – I was getting my Master’s in cognitive neuroscience while Will was in med school – the unexpected happened. Will was diagnosed with testicular cancer. We navigated the scary journey of a young adult cancer diagnosis together, and he recovered. Things went back to “normal”… temporarily.

A few years down the line, we’d moved again to Iowa. Will was in residency. I was working in higher education, marketing, and communications. On top of that, we were now parents to two kids (even though everyone in medicine warns against having babies during med school or residency – oops). Obviously life wasn’t chaotic enough, so Will’s remaining testicle decided to join in on the whole cancer thing. We went through treatment and recovery again, and once Will had finished residency, we set off to Oregon to settle into normal adult life for real this time.

Then on May 11, 2020, he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in his sleep. I woke to the sounds of his agonal breathing, and saved his life with 10 minutes of CPR. Our children were in the next room. It was the single most traumatic moment of my life.

Unraveling all of these experiences changed us forever.

Will’s journey in dealing with the aftershocks of his sudden cardiac arrest, while profoundly impactful, was a little more straightforward than mine. He had something concrete to point to, that people would understand. On the flipside, I found people struggled to understand why I was so profoundly affected. If anything, I should have been happy that I’d saved him – right?

At that point I didn’t have the words to describe the psychological effects of coming so close to losing my husband; watching him nearly die underneath my hands. I’d gone to a very dark place and become isolated there, leaving me feeling alone, overwhelmed, and angry. Later on, I would come to understand that I had dissociative PTSD. My “a-ha” moment finally came when I stumbled across a journal article by Kirstie Haywood and Katie N Dainty that introduced the concept of the forgotten patient – the co-survivor. Finally understanding that I wasn’t alone, I wanted to do what I could to make sure nobody else fell through the same gaps in the healthcare system that I had.

So while Will used comedy to cope, I wrote. For myself first and foremost, but then, for others. I wanted my words to provide the comfort and assurance I had needed. Social media became my platform to share my story, in the hopes that other people could recognize themselves in it. I’ve also worked to educate healthcare professionals on the patient and family experience, and give anyone who knows a co-survivor the tools to show up.

As it would happen, a lot of people online liked what both of us were doing. I saw an opportunity to turn our work – Will’s satirical videos and my writing – into something more. Specifically, a real-life entertainment and educational media business with heart and humor at its core. That’s when I took the leap to become CEO and co-founder of Glaucomflecken, LLC. And yeah, having an LLC with that name might actually be the craziest part of this all.